Comité Juif Algé
COMITé JUIF ALGéRIEN D'ÉTUDES SOCIALES
a jewish antidefamation organization.
The Comité Juif Algérien d'Études Sociales (CESA; Algerian Jewish Committee for Social Studies) was founded in 1917 by Dr. Henri Aboulker to function as a kind of antidefamation league in the face of continued, virulent pied noir antisemitism in Algeria. CESA's expressed goal was "to be on the alert that the free exercise of the Jews' rights as citizens not be violated or ignored."
The group lobbied through French political channels to achieve fuller social and civil rights for Algerian Jews, not as Jews, but as Frenchmen. One of its first campaigns was to remove the barrier preventing Jews from being accepted into the Algerian General Association of Students. As part of its public relations, CESA published and distributed to French military and public figures the Gold Book of Algerian Jewry, which listed all Algerian Jews who were killed in action during World War I and all who received military decorations and citations.
Having achieved most of its goals, the group became inactive after several years but revived as the leading voice of Algerian Jewry during the late 1930s.
Bibliography
Stillman, Norman A. The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991.
Norman Stillman